Diary of a Hypnotherapist, Episode 16 | @caroline-cavanagh | Anxiety Specialist

Hi there and welcome to the next edition of Diary of a Hypnotherapist, my personal discipline of reflecting back on my week to see what went well so I can do more of it, but also what could I have done better so that I can make next week a better week too. And this is a discipline that I work with a lot with many of my clients to reflect back, and that reflection therapeutically is called hindsight. Because when we reflect back, we're using knowledge that we've gained since that event happened. So even now I can reflect back on the session that I did earlier this week knowing the outcome because some of the clients given me feedback since then said this has happened, and that really is a big part of a therapist's work—is being able to identify someone's story and really question it. Does A align with B? Have you missed something out? And also really importantly is noticing you can change the narrative of a story. This week I've seen several clients who are struggling with depression, and that's not uncommon for this end part of the year where for a lot of people it is very tough. And Sadly, 2 particular people stood out, one of them very young, only 11 years old, a young lady who sat in front of me and said, Caroline, what is the point of me being here? There was also a young man, early 20s, who had stockpiled paracetamol with the intention of taking them all. Fortunately, both of those people are now well on the road to recovery and dare I say could even see there is the potential ahead of them to thrive. And a lot of the work we've been doing is about stories that they were telling themselves. They were reflecting back and seeing all of the challenges that they'd had in their life, all of the things that had made things very difficult. But what I could do as a therapist is challenge some of those stories and say, yeah, but what went well out of that? What else has happened that was good? Because we really pick the stories that we focus on and start to ignore other things that were equally as valid, just not perhaps the story that they wanted to tell themselves at the time. And that's similar with people with anxiety as well. Often with anxiety, it's stories about things that haven't yet happened. It's imagining something that could happen in the past go wrong, and that results in a sensation of risk to which anxiety is the natural response. So storytelling is a fascinating element that I love working with because we do all tell ourselves stories, but when you change the narrative, when you look to have a different ending, you can very quickly change the feeling that that story creates. That— so that's my little takeaway for you today. If you have a story kicking around in your head— another word for a story just being a thought, something that you are telling yourself— just check in and say, if it was in the past, bring in hindsight. What's happened since I started telling that story? Which bits of the story have I actually omitted and am not telling? Or if your thoughts are about something in the future, could your story have a really positive ending that rather than seeing risk, something going wrong, actually see a really positive outcome? And by telling yourself a different story that has perhaps that lovely fairy tale ending, why not? Just notice How your feelings change too. So I will leave that with you today. I will wish you a wonderful week ahead and look forward to sharing some of my reflections that come to me at the end of this week. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye.